Showing your research to the family - copyright?!

[bugbear]

I recently did a little piece of one-off research, following a question in the letters page of my local paper.

I emailed my results to the author of the letter, who (it turns out) was from slightly out-of-area and wanted to put "the story" in his more-local-to-him paper.

So far, so obvious.

So I checked Ancestry and found this:
https://www.ancestry.com/cs/legal/copyright-policy

No apparent exceptions for showing stuff to members of the family, let alone the local paper. You need to apply IN WRITING to an Address in the USA in all cases.

Is there something more helpful in their other T&C's ?

On the face of it, having researched my partner's tree, I can't show her anything!

   BugBear

[stanmapstone]

Have you looked at http://www.ancestry.co.uk/cs/legal/termsandconditions ?

Stan

[groom]

http://www.ancestry.co.uk/cs/legal/termsandconditions

Probably comes under section 5 - Content used in the Service?

Surely it also depends on whether you have used information that can only be found on Ancestry? If for instance you have quoted from UK censuses, that could have come from a variety of sites including the free sites such as Family Search. Births etc could have come from free sites as well.

[bugbear]

http://www.ancestry.co.uk/cs/legal/termsandconditions#ContentUsed

"Not to distribute, republish, or sell significant portions of any Ancestry Content."

(my emphasis).

I think that roughly means showing your family the tiny proportion of Ancestry data that applies to them is OK.

 BugBear

[andrewalston]

I believe that the UK has a "fair use" exemption relating to quotes used in research.

The US have different intellectual property laws, and in some parts of the world the situation is even worse. A research paper which quotes Francis & Crick's paper on the structure of DNA, for example, even properly credited, would be a breach of copyright unless permission had been explicitly obtained from James Watson and the heirs of Francis Crick.